The Luna He Lost to the Alpha King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: You're Just the Alpha Now
Cora's mate walks out of their daughter's promotion ceremony for his stepsister's call, and after Hazel's turn Cora refuses the mate bond aloud in front of the pack while the Alpha King puts a hand to his chest.
The principal read the fifth graders' names off her list, and the chair beside mine was still empty.
Three hundred wolves filled the Redfern school hall, and every one of them knew whose chair it was.
Declan had left it twenty minutes ago, phone to his ear.
"Two minutes," he'd whispered. "Save my seat. I'll be back before she's up, I swear."
The screen had said FELICITY.
He never smiled when it said that name.
He went still, touched his collar, and stood up.
For years I'd told myself that was a husband trying not to look eager.
His text had come right after. "Jasper's class has a dads' walk-in today and he has no dad. Felicity is falling apart. Back soon."
I read it twice and put my phone away.
Last month, on the night of the thunderstorm, Felicity had said she was too scared to sleep alone, and Declan had left our asthmatic daughter alone in the house and gone to sit with her.
Hazel was ten.
She sat on the stage with the other fifth graders, her inhaler on its blue lanyard, and she kept looking at the back doors.
He had promised her this ceremony every night for a month.
I lifted my hand so she'd see somebody was there.
The Alpha King was handing out the medals. Torin Halvorsen did it every year, because the Crown paid for our school.
He was tall, grey-eyed, with a burn scar running up his left forearm, and he shook each child's hand.
"Hazel Mercer," the principal said.
Hazel stood.
She crossed the stage with her shoulders pulled up near her ears, the way she did when she was holding something in.
At the front she looked down at the empty chair, then at me.
Then her chest started to catch.
I heard it from forty feet away, the thin whistle I knew better than my own heartbeat.
Her hand closed around the inhaler.
Somebody in the hall tutted, soft and annoyed.
The Alpha King did not hurry her.
He crouched until his eyes were level with hers, and he said, quietly enough that I only caught it because I was a mother, "Take your time. Nobody in this room is going anywhere until you've had your turn."
She took two puffs.
She breathed.
He hung the medal around her neck and held her hand a second longer than he had to.
Then he looked past her, along the empty seat, and at me.
I didn't look away.
Afterward I took her to the front office, because the junior school wanted her emergency contact form signed before the end of the day.
The first name printed on it was Declan Mercer.
Hazel's hands were cold.
"Baby," I said, and held out the pen. "Cross his name off."
She went still.
She stared at the line, and her thumb moved on the edge of the paper, and then she whispered, "I don't want to."
She didn't say it like a child being stubborn.
She said it like I'd asked her to cut something off herself.
I took the pen back.
"Okay," I said. "That one is yours to cross out. Nobody does it for you."
We walked out into the parking lot at ten past four.
Declan's truck was already in the loop, one door open.
He had Jasper on his hip, and Jasper had a paper crown and a missing front tooth, and he was laughing.
Felicity came around the bumper with a tissue in her hand.
"Cora, I'm so sorry," she said, and her blue eyes were red-rimmed and full of tears. "This is all on me. He was only being kind, and I fell apart. Please don't be angry with him."
She was thanking the crossing guard before I'd said a word.
Declan set Jasper down. "Cora, I got here for the end of it. I'll make it up to her, I swear."
The pack was still streaming out of the hall behind us.
Wolves slowed.
They always did when the Alpha and his Luna stood in one place.
Hazel stood beside me with her medal, and she looked at his hands, not his face.
"You said two minutes," I said.
"It was Jasper. He had nobody."
"He had a mother. Hazel had you, and you promised."
"Cora." He touched his collar. "Not here."
"Here is where you left her."
I stepped forward until I could feel the whole parking lot listening.
"I, Cora Mercer, Luna of the Redfern Pack, refuse the bond between me and Declan Mercer."
The words came out steady. I had said them in my head for a year.
His face went gray.
"You're just the Alpha now," I said. "That's all you are to me."
Something in my chest, a cord I had carried for eleven years, pulled tight.
Then it went quiet.
It didn't snap. It went still.
Declan made a sound I had never heard from him.
His knee hit the asphalt.
Felicity caught his arm and cried out, and around us three hundred wolves went silent.
I took Hazel's hand and turned toward the car.
Across the lot, thirty yards away, the Alpha King had stopped with his door half open.
He had one hand flat against his chest.
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